How to combat cart abandonment

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Feb 16, 2018 / by
How to combat cart abandonment

Cart abandonment is the bane of every ecommerce store owner. Research shows that the average cart abandonment rate across numerous industries is a staggering 69%! This represents a huge chunk of potential customers who, for whatever reason, showed initial buying intent and then didn’t complete the purchase.

Reclaiming even a small fraction of these lost customers can do wonders for the profitability of your online store. Here are some of the most effective cart abandonment strategies.

Leverage social proof

It’s a sad fact, but people often don’t purchase from you because they don’t trust you. Unfortunately, there are a lot of marketers out there who don’t care about their customers and are prepared to sell weak products in order to make some fast cash. The consequence of this is that people need to trust that your sales copy isn’t just hyperbole, that you will deliver and that your product will perform as advertised.

In a previous post, we discussed some of the most powerful ways to leverage social proof on your site. However, on the subject of product pages specifically, your best forms of social proof are reviews and testimonials from previous customers. Text reviews are good, but nothing beats a good video testimonial.

But how do you motivate your customers to leave reviews? Oftentimes, offering an incentive to your repeat customers in exchange for a quick testimonial will work wonders. A product page full of video reviews will always convert better than one without.

Delivery optionsKill off any bad surprises at the checkout

Here is a staggering statistic: 28% of consumers will leave their cart if they see unexpected postage costs at the checkout. To combat this, be explicit upfront about your P&P. Don’t force people to click through to an additional page: state your costs in an FAQ section within the products page. Some people offer free shipping on all orders specifically because shipping costs are confusing to people (they simply increase the costs on their products in order to compensate for the extra costs).

Write enticing abandoned cart emails

It’s important to remember that the longer a cart is abandoned, the less likely it is to ever be revived. With this in mind, aim to fire off your abandoned cart emails within 24 hours of the incident occurring. With certain Shopify plugins, you can automate this process.

The key to a great abandoned cart email is leveraging emotions – particularly FOMO (the fear of missing out). A great way to do this is by including an image of the product that they placed in the cart. Sometimes, you can achieve good results by including humorous messages in your abandoned cart emails.

Andrew Bialecki states:

Make your abandoned cart email funny. Make it something people will chuckle at. This is why we prefer to call these types of emails cart reminders instead of abandoned cart emails. The important part isn’t that someone abandoned their cart. The main focus shouldn’t be on you recouping something that was abandoned.


The important part is that your customers have given you a chance to build a relationship by sending a reminder. Even if they’re not interested in that purchase, you’re leaving them with a positive feeling towards your brand which might pay off right then or down the road.

Display trust badges

People need to feel that their credit card and contact details are secure when they buy from you, particularly since data breaches have been all over the news in recent years. One of the easiest ways you can do this is by displaying trust badges on your site. If Symantec gives your site the co-sign, then people will feel much more comfortable buying from you.

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